Possession and dispossession, displacement and debt—it seems that the stories that condition our present are inextricably born out of the stories that conditioned our past. The first of four special issues of South as a State of Mind, temporarily reconfigured as the documenta 14 journal, examines forms and figures of displacement and dispossession, and the modes of resistance—aesthetic, political, literary, biological—found within them. In essays, both literary and visual, as well as poems, speeches, diaries, conversations, and specially commissioned artist projects, the first issue of the d14 South considers dispossession as a historical and contemporary condition along with its connections to archaeology and the city, coloniality and performativity, debt and imperialism, provenance and repatriation, feminism and protest.
To launch the inaugural issue of the d14 South, documenta 14 has organized a series of public events—in Athens, Kassel, Berlin, Dhaka, and Kolkata—that bring the disparate voices of the journal, as well as those outside of it, into conversation in cities across the world. This February, South goes to Bangladesh and India for two launch events. The first will be held in Dhaka on February 6, the second in Kolkata on February 10.
For the Dhaka launch at the Dhaka Art Summit, in the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, documenta 14 Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk and Editor-in-Chief of Publications Quinn Latimer will present the first issue of the documenta 14 South as a State of Mind, reading from and expanding on its diverse explorations of both contemporary and historical forms of displacement and dispossession. In addition, they will elaborate on forthcoming issues of the d14 South, which are variously devoted to ideas of language and ecology, post-colonialism and neoclassicism, and the rich relationship among pedagogical, performative, and political processes.
For the Kolkata launch at Harrington Arts Centre—organized in conjunction with Seagull Books—South has invited Seagull Books founder and director Naveen Kishore, art historian and writer Deepak Ananth, and artists Moyra Davey and Amar Kanwar to join documenta 14’s Natasha Ginwala, Quinn Latimer, and Adam Szymczyk for an evening of readings, talks, and screenings that open a dialogue into the South journal’s key concerns while exploring literature as a critical art practice both within and outside of the context of Bengal and the global South.
Deepak Ananth, based in Paris, has written extensively on artists practicing across India and Europe, considering their visual languages in relation to situated social histories, international reception, and individual poetics. Artist and writer Moyra Davey’s works in print, photography, and film explore the nature of intertextuality, travel as citation, and personal ephemera in literary as well as visual exchanges that act as memory thresholds between public and private spaces. Kolkata-based publisher Naveen Kishore is a pioneering figure in the field of independent publishing in India, bringing into circulation internationally renowned authors and Bengal’s most significant fiction writers, theorists, and historians. His longstanding correspondence with a range of authors will be presented as a set of readings. Filmmaker and artist Amar Kanwar employs film as a structural process to narrate histories of violence and division, as well as engage networks of activism, the poetry of the dispossessed, and the continuous struggles for democratic society in South Asia. He will discuss the context and reception of his work The Lightning Testimonies (2007), first presented at documenta 12, at the Assam State Museum in 2015, a collaboration with the KNMA and the Women’s Rights organization, North East Network.
South as a State of Mind is a magazine founded by Marina Fokidis in Athens in 2012. Beginning in 2015, the magazine temporarily became the documenta 14 journal and will publish four semiannual special issues until the opening of the exhibition in Athens and Kassel in 2017. These special issues are edited by Quinn Latimer and Adam Szymczyk. The documenta 14 South is conceived as a medium for research, criticism, art, and literature that parallels the years of work on the d14 exhibition overall, one that helps define and frame its concerns and aims. As such, the journal is a manifestation of documenta 14 rather than a discursive lens through which to merely presage the topics to be addressed in the eventual exhibition. Writing and publishing, in all their forms, are an integral part of documenta 14, and the journal heralds that process.
Through this collaboration with documenta 14, The Seagull Foundation for the Arts continues its multi-faceted role in actively supporting and disseminating arts and culture publishing, as well as critical theory. This launch event is hosted at Harrington Street Arts Centre, where Seagull has previously organized several events and exhibitions, including a forthcoming solo show by K. G. Subramanyan, titled Sketches, Scribbles, Drawings.